How much sleep do you need? According to this study, it’s in your DNA
It’s been ingrained into our brains that for most humans, it’s recommended that we get about 7-8 hours of sleep a night to wake up feeling rested and ready to go. But, as we all know, everyone is different.
Some people proclaim themselves as “light sleepers” or “heavy sleepers,” while others say they’re “night owls” or “morning people.” I have personally never been a morning person, but we all have that one friend who seems to function on little to no sleep. You know exactly who I’m talking about — the person who can go to bed after midnight and wake up at 6 a.m. bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, while the rest of us catch ourselves hitting snooze until the last possible second.
And while we can self-identify what kind of sleeper we are based on our lifestyles or personality, it’s much more scientific than that. So what’s the real reasoning for why some people need less sleep than others? It’s in your DNA. Literally.
I’ve never been able to understand how people can wake up ready to go when they’re getting less than 6 hours of sleep. But thanks to science, we’re starting to learn some answers.
In 2014, a study of sleep genetics found that 80% of people’s susceptibility to symptoms of sleep deprivation had to do with their genetics. And now, there are more and more studies to back that claim.
According to a new study released in August, some people can feel rested after just 4-6 hours of sleep because they possess a mutated gene. This mutated gene is called ADRB1, and it enables the production of noradrenaline in our brains. This mutation, in result, promotes the activity of nerve cells that make us feel awake.
The ADRB1 gene can influence how long we stay awake for each day, and can be linked to reasons why some people don’t need much sleep to function healthily each day.
When most people don’t get enough sleep, they’ll experience short-term effects like mood swings, irritability, forgetfulness, and inability to concentrate. Prolonged sleep deprivation, though, can increase your risk for high blood pressure, heart attacks, diabetes, and more. This is why it’s recommended that humans get between 7-8 hours of sleep a night.
But as more sleep studies are conducted, we’re learning more and more about the importance of sleep on our health, and why some people do not need as much sleep to go throughout their day without feeling exhausted.
“The 8-hour norm has been the standard for a long time, but somehow a few new mutations occurred recently and produced this seemingly advantageous trait,” Ying-Hui Fi, one of the researchers, said in an interview.
The most recent study was conducted on a family of 12, where each family member sleeps as little as 4.5 hours a night without feeling tired. Since the start of the study, this gene mutation has been found in more than 50 families. When the research team bred rats with the same mutation, they found the rats slept less, too.
Fu and her research team think that new sleep mutations have recently emerged in human history, which is why it’s not found widespread in humans. As sleep studies continue, though, researchers will be able to identify more people with possible sleep-altering genes.
This is the second type of study that looked at specific gene mutations that affect sleep. In 2009, this same group of researchers found a gene called DEC2 that’s linked to feeling rested with about six hours of sleep. This gene codes for a protein that helps turn off the expression of other genes, including for the hormone orexin, regulates wakefulness.
So if you’re a person who can sleep four hours a night without feeling tired at all, it might be in your genes. As for the rest of us, we’ll stick to our 8 hours of sleep a night.
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